The classic PC strategy game Rome: Total War is coming to iPhone — and you don’t have long to wait. Well, technically you may have been waiting since the game arrived on PC more than a decade ago, but it’s finally almost here. Honest!
Check out the eagerly anticipated trailer below, ahead of the game’s August 23 debut on iPhone.
Rome: Total War first landed on PC back in 2004. A little over half a decade later, in 2010, it was ported to macOS, before jumping to iOS with an iPad version in late 2016.
For anyone who somehow never played the game, it’s a mix of turn-based strategy and real-time tactics set in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, spanning 270 BC to AD 14.
An immense achievement
Squeezing the entire experience onto a device that’s about the physical dimensions of a deck of cards is pretty astonishing, and developers Feral Interactive had a few challenges along the way.
Earlier this year, they tweeted that, “Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day,” and said, “Extra time is needed to deliver its full scale and superb gameplay to the smaller screen.”
Hopefully the wait is worth it, however, because the prospect of playing this on iPhone is enormously exciting. To help make the leap to the smaller screen, the developers have created a new user-interface with enhanced touch controls — although we’re assured that, yes, this is the full game and not a stripped-down mobile version.
If you already own the iPad edition, you’ll be able to get the iPhone version free of charge. If you don’t have it, you can buy it for $9.99, starting August 23. Considering that’s substantially less money than we paid for the game on PC back in 2004, that’s one helluva bargain!
Are you excited about Rome: Total War on iPhone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
